Does your cat or dog have a surveillance tag around its neck or under its skin in order to protect it or make you feel safe? If so this may not offer the security you had once thought! It has now been shown that it may be possible to infect such tags with computer viruses and other malware.

So called RFID tags (Radio Frequency Identification Device) are likely to be more and more common in the future. They will be embedded in passports, luggage tags for airlines, electronic devices and they can be placed around the neck or under the skin of pets. Using RFID chips it is easy to track and trace those items which have a RFID chip embedded or to retrieve location information. But while earlier studies showed that the chips were too small to be infected with viruses or other malware, a group of European researchers have proved that it is possible to infect RFID chips with malicious code.

- There is a huge potential for criminals, hackers and terrorists if they succeed in infecting such chips. They can infect the chips in order to secretly collect sensitive information or to monitor movements. The use of RFID chips will undoubtedly become more frequent in a society where surveillance has become one of the most important tools for fighting criminality and terrorism.

Read more about virus in RFID chips here:
http://www.norman.com/Virus/Articles/31413/

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For more information, please contact: 

• Audun Lødemel, VP market and business dev., Norman ASA, tel: - 47 93 44 65 31